Royal Ontario Museum
Encyclopedic museum of natural history and world cultures, with a soaring glass crystal wing.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto begins with a totem pole that arrived at a train station in the 1920s, sawn in half because it was too tall to travel any other way: the Pole of Sagaween, carved from a single red cedar by an artist named Oyee for a Nisga'a chief of the Eagle tribe. Once it reached the museum, staff faced an odd problem: nothing inside could hold something more than eighty feet tall. Three more poles, carved by Nisga'a and Haida artists, now stand beside it near the grand staircase.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Aga Khan Museum
Granite-and-glass museum devoted to Islamic art, designed around shifting patterns of natural light.
Art Gallery of Ontario
Encyclopedic art museum with a major Group of Seven collection and works spanning centuries of European and Canadian art.
Gardiner Museum
Museum devoted entirely to ceramic art, built from one couple's private pottery and porcelain collection.
Bata Shoe Museum
Deconstructivist building shaped like a tilted shoebox, housing thousands of shoes spanning forty five centuries.
Textile Museum of Canada
War rugs and folk textiles from around the world spanning two thousand years of weaving traditions.
Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto Canada
Contemporary art galleries inside a converted early twentieth century aluminum factory with distinctive mushroom-shaped concrete columns.